Ann Eveleth probes the ANC’s threats to boycott the KwaZulu-Natal elections on May 29
Poor leadership, organisational chaos and overstretched party machinery are the real reasons behind the African National Congress’s election panic in KwaZulu-Natal.
ANC sources argue that the party leadership failed to grasp the significance of conceding victory to the Inkatha Freedom Party in 1994: that the IFP’s power base would expand from a bantustan to the entire province, and its control of provincial machinery would make a future ANC victory an uphill battle.
Claims of IFP-aligned chiefs and “reactionary” Joint Services Boards (JSBs) dominating rural election processes must have reached the ANC’s Durban headquarters months ago when its rural supporters first attempted to register.
The JSBs owe their existence in no small part to IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The chiefs — who will serve in an ex-officio capacity on rural local government — have as little business handling election administration as a judge has acting as prosecutor and executioner. Yet the ANC has only raised its voice on the issue now. Why?
ANC provincial executive member S’bu Ndebele denies his party has been silent on the issue. It raised the matter “in provincial structures much earlier”, he said, while voters’ rolls only became available for scrutiny in the past three weeks.
But according to other ANC sources, the party failed to mobilise its supporters to protest against the problems in the election administration in rural areas, and some of the fraudulent registrations should have been challenged during earlier hearings of the revision courts.
Of course, the ANC was at a disadvantage in this regard: its provincial leaders were occupied with the arduous provincial constitutional process, while IFP national leaders like Walter Felgate and Home Affairs adviser Mario Ambrosini shouldered that responsibility for the IFP, freeing up its provincial leaders to deal with the preparations for local government.
One ANC leader argued, however, that the party’s problems run much deeper — dating back to its early attitude to the local polls: “We thought if we could maintain our urban strongholds, we didn’t have to worry about the rural areas, which are mostly IFP walkovers. Only recently has it dawned on the leadership that we will lose the regional councils if we don’t have a stand in the rural areas.”
Ndebele denied the party was neglecting rural areas. But he suggested that it was more significant to win urban centres: “You can win Babanango, so you will have the right to decide whether donkeys can come into the town, or you can win Durban, where you will decide on real delivery issues.”
Most worrying for the ANC is the realisation that it also faces a stiff challenge for control of the powerful Durban Metropolitan Council. ANC sources concede a “hung” council is likely, with the ANC controlling about 45% to 50% of seats, and the remaining going to the IFP and other “mickey mouse” parties and ratepayers’ bodies.
One source traced the ANC’s problems in Durban to its post-1994 election “appeasement” strategy. The ANC reached an agreement with the IFP that in Durban the two parties would be represented on a 50-50 basis on the “non- statutory” side in the run-up to the interim council’s formation. The IFP promptly ditched the ANC to find favour with the white parties, which helped it install an IFP mayor in the most significant ANC stronghold.
Another problem the ANC faces is the effect of the pre-1994 agreement to postpone non-racial local democracy. With wards from former white and Indian areas balanced evenly against more populous former African areas, a majority vote does not necessarily translate into majority power. This raises the stakes in the fight for white and Indian voters.
With so many odds stacked against it, ANC sources argue that the party’s provincial leadership needed to ensure it had a slick, well-oiled campaign machine up and running last year. Yet the ANC’s provincial election manager, Sipho Gabashe, was only appointed post-November.
Other signs of disarray emerged when President Nelson Mandela addressed a rally in Newcastle last month. It was labelled an election launch , but the party failed to unveil an election manifesto — except to recycle campaign slogans used by the ANC in other provinces last year.
Party leaders argued at the time that the slogans had achieved success for the party in the polls and there was no reason to reinvent the wheel. Yet the low turnout (about 55%) for the November poll ought to worry the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.
In other provinces, the poor turn-out would have little impact. In KwaZulu-Natal — the province with the lowest 1994 turnout, at less than 83% — whites tend to vote safely in suburban bliss and IFP supporters tend to vote en masse. The people most likely to need encouragement are ANC voters — due to fear, apathy, frustration or fatalism.
But how diligent can a party be when its leader insists on wearing three hats? Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s national chair, provincial chair and provincial MEC for Economic Affairs and Tourism, is severely overstretched.
While provincial leaders say Zuma has begun to play a greater role in rural mobilisation recently, the expectation that his rural, traditional Zulu persona would muster rural votes never paid off in the 1994 election. Now his head will be on the block in local elections — a realisation that has no doubt contributed to the ANC’s threats of a boycott if the poll goes ahead on May 29.
Other ANC leaders argue that Zuma’s greatest achievement — his four-year effort to prise King Goodwill Zwelithini away from the IFP — has marginally neutralised the IFP’s rural sway, but has done little in terms of dousing the flames of feudalism lurking around every bend in the province’s delicate political stalemate.
Within the party, Zuma’s 1994 victory over former South Natal chair Jeff Radebe and the late Harry Gwala heralded sharp divisions in the party on the eve of the 1994 general election. Sources say Zuma has, however, failed to seize the opportunity provided by Radebe’s move to national government and Gwala’s death to translate the new unity into votes. A lacklustre public speaker and political backroom negotiator, Zuma is poorly placed in his current — very public — roles.
The ANC’s local government negotiator, MP Mike Sutcliffe, is also overstretched. When the opportunity to challenge voters rolls presented in January, Sutcliffe was busy negotiating the provincial constitution. To their credit, they outfoxed the IFP in that process.
Unfortunately for the ANC, some of their KwaZulu-Natal leaders, such as Blade Nzimande, are now wrapped up in the final constitutional talks. The sources cite a “brain drain” of skilled leaders from the province to parliament, as well as the ill-planned gravitation of the province’s remaining leaders to Durban: “(ANC provincial secretary) Senzo Mchunu was a beacon of ANC leadership in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Now he’s in Durban,” one said. The source said the ANC’s 1994 move to break up it’s three sub-provincial regions into eight smaller regions has not helped the party. Where strong regional offices once existed,only small constitutency offices remained, while power in the organisation was vested in the Durban office.Grassroots mobilisation efforts had not been widespread and there was no significant drive to open new branches to build the party. To be fair, attempts by the party to launch branches in IFP no-go areas had been met with violence in numerous instances. One ANC source said the party also suffered from a failure to control “indisciplined leaders” whose power struggles were preventing the launch of the party’s Greater Maritzburg region. Indiscipline among the party’s K section KwaMashu structures had opened the party to infiltration by “sinister groupings” bent on destabilising the area: “They have succeeded. People are afraid to send their children to school and the clinic no loner operates at night. How can we expect people to risk their lives to go to the polls?” asked the source.
The ANC has repeatedly called on central
government to beef up security in the province. Extra deployments had only trickled in on a short-term basis, fuelling a perception among provincial leaders that the party’s national leadership had “sacrificed” them to the IFP. Provincial sources say the province has borne the brunt of IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s boycott politics – ultimately a reaction to central government strategy. When the ANC national leadership refused to agree to international mediation, Buthelezi stepped up the heat in KwaZulu- Natal. But other sources argue the ANC’s endemic reliance on central government intervention can offer no more than short-term solutions. “Inkatha must be defeated on the ground, only then can we begin to talk of delivering democracy over fuedalism,” the source argued.